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Blacklava: "Clothing
for a New State of Mind"
Find Clothing, Products and Programming with an Asian American
Consciousness
Evolving from a small, independent business producing Asian
American-themed apparel with a political consciousness, the new
Blacklava.net web site has grown into a vital online hub for a wide
variety of products and information of genuine Asian American (pop)
cultural relevance.
The main sections include a unique online store carrying music,
books, adult and children's apparel, knick-knacks and sporting gear
produced by and for highly diverse creative folks in the (trans)national
Asian American community.
Beginning as a small T-shirt business, Blacklava quickly made
a name for itself producing ethnic-themed designs and rapid-response,
activist slogan designs rapidly produced to address topical political
and social issues in the community, from Wen Ho Lee to Abercrombie &
Fitch to SARS coverage. As the Blacklava brand became
known, the company formed new cooperative partnerships to help
distribute designs for individual artists and small collectives,
including Secret Asian Man, Big Bad Chinese Mama, Mango Tribe and Taikoproject. Naturally, other forms of apparel soon followed, and
Blacklava began to invite and expand to a variety of independently
produced stuff ranging from musical instruments to videos -- virtually
anything that pass the Blacklava litmus test.
It may seem odd to hear people refer to themselves as "fans" of an
online store, but devotees of the Blacklava brand have come to
find much of sticky, non-commercial interest as regular visitors to the
site. A deeply entrenched presence seen more or less everywhere
throughout Asian America, proprietor Ryan S. Suda has operated
the outfit since its inception as wholly in-community enterprise.
As a result, Blacklava is not only a regular fixture at APA conferences
and events nationwide, but has been itself a dedicated sponsor of
real-world event programming including "Tuesday Night Cafe," a
series of California-based (for now) concerts and art performances that
raise funds to establish arts resources in Asian American neighborhoods,
and the "Youth Art in Action" program.
The third main site section offers additional resources just for
online visitors, including the open, user-friendly Blacklava Forums,
a Career Center with free job search tools offered in partnership
with IMDiversity.com, the "Lava Rockers" feature promoting
independent APA musical artists, and a categorized Links section
that collects a particularly interesting array of hard-to-find, personal
and independent arts sites.
The Village editors can't recommend this site highly enough, so
whenever you've got gifts to buy, events to deck out for, a hole in your
music collection, a great design to promote, a hankering to take up
taiko, or just an urge to blow some spare change on unique
stuff that's next-to-impossible to find anywhere else, drop by the store
in Torrance, CA or visit
Blacklava.net.
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